Protei is an unmanned shape-shifting sailing robot developed Open Hardware by a global community of makers called Open-H2O (former Open_Sailing) the collective randomwalks and Amorphica. Protei has no rudder nor centerboard : the entire hull bends to control this sailing robots providing it unprecedented sailing properties. Originally developed to clean up oil spill, Protei will be used to measure radioactivity, plastic debris, monitor fisheries, coral reefs, algae blooms, provide general oceanographic data or serving as surface satellite link to underwater vehicles. Protei has been produced by the V2_in Rotterdam, NL. Protei has been generously funded by over 300 backers on Kickstarter. Everyone is welcome to join, contribute, modify, produce, distribute the design and share their findings.

Hints on Open Hardware Entrepreneurship

As we are in the process of setting ourselves up as an Open Hardware business, tons of questions arise. Aurelie Vincent - our guided missile, and myself (Cesar) have been crawling the web looking for the best recipes to build Protei as a social business that has the maximum positive environmental impact. All this thinking is structuring the [in progress business plan] but we also thought we'd share the most inspiring links with the whole community as we progress.